


Unredeemable

by weaksauce



Category: Homestuck
Genre: not stridercest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 22:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14628336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weaksauce/pseuds/weaksauce
Summary: A rare rooftop chat.





	Unredeemable

**Author's Note:**

> tw: smoking/cigarettes

You watch the lazy heat waves radiate off the nearby buildings, last rays of the scorching sun pulling a magic act and disappearing behind the high rises. The sun is literally the biggest thing in the galaxy, and when it wants to disappear, it does so by using the Earth itself as a shield. You guess that's kind of clever and think about a way to twist the words into some kind of shitty rap.

The heat and friction of the concrete under your cheek make it feel like it's pulsing. You're sure your face smushed against the roof of your apartment would look comical if you had tripped or eaten shit after falling off your board, but your Bro's shadow keeping the sun's window-reflected blaze out of your eyes makes the situation a little less funny. But also much cooler. Cooler for him, lamer for you.

You try to lift an arm off the ground, but it aches too much and just kind of flops back down like a feeble fish frying on the roof's pavement. You put all of your remaining strength into your neck muscles and manage to lift your head and shift an arm under your chest to prop yourself. You're sure your cheek is probably red from the burning hot concrete, and it probably looks like you're some blushing anime bride. You feel the familiar weight of your Bro's foot pushing your head back down. You fight it, struggling against it until your muscles shake, but of course his leg is stronger than your weakass neck muscles. You feel pebbly hot concrete against your cheek again.

You chance a glance up, forehead creasing with the strain of looking impossibly far up above, to see Bro's face pulled into that small smile. Other people probably wouldn't even notice it, but you recognize it instantly. It’s the one that forces you to be painfully aware of how stupid you probably look, hair matted with sweat, shades off kilter on your nose, kissing the pavement, body sprawled out and useless. Your sword is probably only two feet from your right hand, but you're too goddamn weak to be able to reach out and get it. Your eyes drop again, finding constellations in the concrete.

"Give up?" the smooth and even voice comes from above, and you can't help but relive how fucking cool he looks right now. His hair is perfect, shades not off kilter like yours, hat awesome, white shirt pristine as hell, not a drop of sweat rolling off of him despite the heat and sparring with you for hours on end. But all you can really see from your current vantage point are his shoes, ready to push your head back down if you try to stand up.

The sun has set completely now, the world drenched in deep, saturated purples and pinks. You painfully shake your head and muster the steadiest "Fuck no," you can. You want to say a lot more, but two syllables are the longest you trust your voice not to waver.

You tense your arm and try to reach for your sword, try to push your body up. The arm under you manages to peel your upper half off of the cement, just in time to feel something soft drop onto your back. You know the weight of the thing instantly, even though it's filled with fluff, it feels like a ton of bricks in the moment. You guess it's the puppet that broke the camel's back... in this metaphor, you're the camel, and the puppet is a puppet. Maybe sticking to the original metaphor would have been more effective in this case. But maybe you're like Joe Camel. He wears shades and lives in a hotass place just like you.

Your brain is swimming with the nonsensical and disjointed thoughts of pre heat stroke, reeling as the light weight of a fucking puppet is enough to push you back down to the ground. You're struck again with a strange sense of appreciation for your Bro's knowledge of exactly the weight it would take to push you back down into the pavement like a beaten puppy. Black dots crowd at the corners of your vision.

You think you might have passed out for a minute or two because your consciousness does that swimmy thing, and when your eyes regain focus, your Bro is gone, as is the weight of Lil Cal.

You guess that you're glad he left because the way you stumble around when you finally regain lucidity and control over your sore muscles is probably the lamest way that you've ever moved. You look like a baby toddling around or a drunk penguin or something, for a mental image.

You half-walk half-crawl your way to the ledge of the roof, sitting on it to catch your breath for a while before heading inside. It's dark in the glowy orange way that cities get dark at night, and you hunch over to draw air further into your lungs, hands on your knees.

Your breath comes in sputtering spurts for a little while, but it gets easier. You right your shades with two fingers and run a hand through your hair to notice that it's strangely dry now, sweat evaporated.

As you're starting to piece together some kind of time puzzle in your head, your hear the familiar creaking of the rusty hinges on the thin aluminum door leading to the roof. Your head whips in the direction of the sound to see none other than Bro.

"Dude, you been fuckin' around up here?" comes his voice, deep and distant from the other side of the roof. His hand is still on the door knob on the inside as he looks out from the shady gap between the roof and the stairwell, eager as hell to get back to whatever probably puppet-related activity he had been doing.

"...No?" you answer, not really knowing if it's the right answer in this case. Was there a sound coming up here that he suspected was you? Was he upset about it and telling you to shut up? You really hadn't been doing much else than being lamely sprawled on your stomach, so you guess the truth might be the right approach to take.

He emerges from the shadows onto the roof, letting the door slam behind him as he walks over to you, gait irritatingly slow and silent. Every step closer makes you wonder what you did wrong this time.

You're a little surprised when he jumps agilely on to the ledge and lowers himself down to sit next to you, close. You're facing in, toward the roof, and he's facing the opposite way. His legs dangle off the side of the apartment building, high over the city. You can feel his body heat, and you brace yourself instinctively.

"I'm just sitting here. Fuckin' chill out," he says. You look up at him from the corner of your eye, and in the space between his shades and face, you see dark circles under his eyes. He flicks his eyes down at you, and you instantly redirect your attention to the suddenly fascinating vent on the other side of the roof. You try to relax your body and 'chill out,' but you're not sure how successful you are. 

"What's up?" you ask in the most casual tone you can pull off. You've talked to your Bro before, but never like this. Never the two of you sitting down together without a fight taking place, a movie playing, or something to distract the two of you from each other's presence. Not without a separation of at least five layers of irony. This feels different.

"If you weren't fuckin' around, you must've passed out. It's been like two hours," he says, ignoring your question. The instant reaction is shame. Even after all this training, you're still weak. The second emotion is anger. You're not sure at whom it should be directed yet.

"Yeah, I guess you beat my ass pretty good this time, Bro. Congrats on that, I mean really. Good game, I guess. Probably super easy for you to wipe the floor with me anyway. Like a fucking mop or something the way you wiped the floor with me," and you can hear your voice doing the work of choosing for you. The anger is coming out, albeit passive aggressively, and it's directed at him. And you. But mostly him, you think.

"Guess you're still not ready after years of preparation... Well, fuck. Guess I'm not ready, either." You look to the side again to see him looking out at the city, all of it reflected in his shades. Badass as Batman. If Batman wore cool sunglasses.

"What do you mean?" you ask, anger temporarily deflected. You know that he probably won't drop the cryptic bullshit anytime soon. But it's still worth a shot.

"Nothin'," he says. And then he does what might be the most confusing thing yet. He puts a hand on your shoulder like he's an unrealistic stereotype depiction of a brother from an awful movie. Well, not so much puts his hand on it as jerks you lightly by the shoulder. You glance at your sword, but it's on the ground a couple yards away, just laying there like a useless hunk of metal. No way you could reach it quickly enough.

He prods your shoulder again, and it takes you a moment to realize his intentions. Okay, it takes him literally telling you his intentions for you to understand. "Jesus, just turn the fuck around," he says, giving up his grip on your shoulder and letting his hand fall to the ledge.

You don't let the 'oh,' you're thinking escape your lips as you comply. You swing your legs around, turning your body to look out over the city. You look down to the streets below, but you aren't struck with vertigo. The height of your apartment's roof is familiar, comfortable. You kick your legs back and forth a few times before deciding that it makes you look like a dumb kid and cutting off the motion, just letting your feet dangle in a way you think is probably a little more cool.

Now that the sun isn't burning the moisture out of the air, the night feels heavy and wet. Anyone who says hell is hot is completely wrong; hell is literally this sticky and quiet moment with your Bro on the roof of your shitty apartment. "God, it's humider than Satan's swampy asshole," you say, looking out over the city. You're sure that the lights reflect in your glasses, and you're also sure that you don't look like Batman.

Again, to your surprise, Bro snorts at that. Usually he doesn't indulge any of your jokes, or really anything you say in general. He moves next to you, impossibly warm and toned arm bumping your scrawnier one. You swear his body runs at a million degrees, and he must be a robot because you've never seen him sweat. You look over, trying your best to feign disinterest as he pulls something small and rectangular out of his pocket.

Upon closer inspection, it's a pack of cigarettes. He flicks one out with deft fingers and puts it to his lips, looking down and raising an eyebrow at you like he expects something. You understand immediately but are hesitant to give him what he wants; this is 100% a trap.

Cigarette still between his lips, he changes his approach a bit, looking down and drawing another cigarette out of the carton. He offers it to you between two long, slim fingers. You stare at it for a moment. It's absolutely a trap, but you take it anyway, raising it to your lips hesitantly enough for it to look like you don't do this whenever you get the chance. You glance up to see his reaction. Predictably, it's absent.

You give in to his original wordless request and pluck your lighter from your pocket, striking it once, twice, and holding it up. Bro leans in closer, his face a shifting Halloween mask of glowing orange light and deep black shadow near the flickering flame. He moves his head back when his cigarette is lit, taking a puff that makes the tip glow with all its might before fizzling back to an ember.

Smoke seeps out of his mouth languidly as he turns to you, grabbing your lighter. It looks small in his hand as he flicks it once, and it jumps to life. He lights your cigarette with a kind of care, or something, that you’re honestly unprepared for. And then promptly proceeds to chuck your lighter off the top of your building, probably hitting some innocent pedestrian who-the-fuck-cares distance away. Shit, that was actually your last one.

"Told you not to smoke," he says, taking a long drag and looking back out over the city.

You inhale the familiar moderately scratchy heat and exhale a wimpy trail of smoke. You want to ask how he knew, as you were always careful to hide it, but you guess that's a stupid question.

"Yeah," you respond, much more nonchalant than asking a question. You're also realizing quickly that you're not really sure how to interact with your bro.

The two of you smoke in a silence that's uncomfortable but also better than talking, looking out at a city covered in your own gray smoke and ash. He leans back on one hand, and you lean forward in a slouch. The starless sky is vast above, and the city is disappointingly small below, bound by concrete, space, and the limits of human development.

You can't help but think about the uncanniness of this moment. Spending time like this with your bro is something that you'd, somewhere deep down, hoped for for a while. Just the two of you, able to talk shit out. Talk like two dudes, and not a dude and a little baby for once. But now that the moment has come, the silence seems to be more important than your words. More meaningful.

It lingers for a while before you eventually break it, damning the 'silence is meaningful' bullshit to swampy humid Satan ass hell. You remember the spark of quelled anger from earlier; you remember the first time Rose ever used a certain word to describe your brother and how quickly you'd corrected her; you remember the once unfamiliar weight of a sword in your hand.

"Bro," you start, and your voice sounds weird and far away in your ears.

"Yeah?" He looks at you, and his gaze fills you with a deep doubt. What had it been that you wanted to talk about? Your unconventional upbringing? Now? Why? Would it actually do anything to talk about it?

“Nothing,” you answer automatically, your brain cutting you off from asking something that actually might make you confront one of your emotional hurdles.

The “meaningful” silence returns, and your cigarette is now more ash than tobacco. It’s a fuse, a countdown to talk about what you really want to talk about. You’re pretty sure your Bro will disappear like your trail of smoke when there’s nothing left of your cigarette but the butt. You take smaller drags, feeling the occasional brush of his arm against yours, looking out across your orangey, maligned city. In the silence between the two of you, you become aware of the noises that you’ve long since blocked out like the sounds of the highway, occasional beeps, and the drone of too-loud TV sets drifting thick with humidity through open windows. Your shirt is clinging stickily to your shoulder blades as you sit hunched over the city like a gargoyle who has no interest in protecting it.

“Fuck,” you say, and you don’t really notice that you’d been holding the word in until it comes out.

“Yeah,” says Bro, flicking his cigarette butt into the street below. You’re pretty sure that the well-discarded butt lands in the gutter or in a trash can or something. His aim is perfect.

Bro pulls his legs back in from their place reigning over the city, standing up on the ledge. He steps down back onto the roof, and you realize that he's going back inside. Usually, you would feel a biting conflict of both wanting and not wanting him to leave, but today the feeling is much more straightforward. Inexplicably, you just want him to stay. Here. With you.

You impulsively grab his hand like a little kid. His hand is smooth, and it hangs limply in yours as you dig your fingers into the black leather of his glove embarrassingly needingly. When he looks back, you expect him to slap it away.

But he doesn't. He just turns around and looks at you, and he fucking sighs. It's drawn out and heavy.

"Just remember your goddamn training. Stay on your toes, and don't be too much of an idiot to try again when you inevitably fuck everything up."

You know that your confusion is showing on your face, but you don't care right now. You already grabbed his fucking hand like some grubby snot-nosed kid, so disappointing him in one more way doesn't seem so bad. Besides, he isn't even punishing you for it. "What?" you ask.

He ignores your question, just adding one more sentence. “And, no matter what, just be fucking awesome."

And with that, he's gone. Your hand falls uselessly back to your side in the absence of his. The door squeaks closed, and you're alone. It's probably just more of his ironic guardian bullshit that will have no bearing on your life, but this time... This time, you have your doubts about his intent.

You look down at your goddamn hand that grabbed his earlier with contempt before standing up and walking to the door. Your muscles ache, and the windows of the surrounding buildings are glowing eyes jeering at you. You pick up your pace, proving that you're not actually hurting to no one in particular.

You enter the stairwell leading down to your apartment, the door shutting heavily and leaving a roof containing all of Bro’s perfectly unbelievable, utterly horseshit words of wisdom behind you.


End file.
